How to improve my management skills?

You are a young specialist with a university degree in the field of administration and management? You have participated in different internships and have developed strong management skills? That is great! In this case it is time for you to prepare your CV and to start searching for a new career opportunity or to be recommended by one of your contacts for the job vacancy in his company.

The true question actually is how good are your management skills? Do you need to improve them just a bit more in order to be sure that you are going to be hired? If you are asking yourself these questions then we have great news for you – you actually can improve your management skills in just 5 steps!

Which are they:

1. First of all you must focus on your leadership abilities. The strong leadership abilities are much more important for the good management than the strict business procedures. If you are a true leader then you are going to earn the trust of the people. This will allow you to accomplish the given assignments from the board of directors without any problems.

In order to be an effective leader you have to:

Serve as an example to others – Do not forget that you are the person in charge of your department and you are the one who is responsible for leading your team in the right direction. This means that you are going to be an example for every specialist that you are managing. If you cannot manage to demonstrate excellent behavior, business vision and ethics then how can you expect the same from your team?

Do not be the “boss” figure – If you show your team that you are willing to work with them and to lead them towards achieving the desired goals instead of just commanding them, you are going to earn their respect and they will gladly follow you! Do not forget that the good general is on the battlefield alongside his soldiers and he is ready to bleed with them!

Speak with the people – Face-to-face communication is the best way to learn what your team needs and to provide it to them. This is a very important prerequisite for the modern management!

Believe in the abilities of your team – In order to become a strong leader you have to constantly believe in your team. Otherwise you are doomed to failure! The leadership requires energy and faith. So make every decision with the needed amount of passion and constant conviction in the final success!

2. Make a self-evaluation. One hones self-evaluation will clearly show you where your management skills need improvement. Communicate with the board of directors, the other managers and especially with your team. Try to figure out how your work looks like in their point of view. This will help you to understand to what extent you have managed to focus on your leadership abilities. Use the gathered information from these conversations to create your personal leadership mission statement. This will be your compass for a successful management!

3. Learn from the others! Do not get us wrong – this does not mean that your education and personal experience are not good enough. But you are going to agree with us that you can always learn something new, that is already being applied by one of your colleagues either in your company or somewhere else. The effective management does note require from you to re-discover fire and the wheel, if we can express in this way. If you learn from the positive experience of others then you can find out how you can use this in order to improve your personal management skills!

4. Implement a positive change in your team. This applies especially if you have been put in charge of an already formed team who has not worked efficiently enough. Analyze carefully the drawbacks of the approach that your predecessor was using. Find out why his vision has not been efficient and create a change plan. Do not modify the positive sides on this approach, unless they are completely opposite to your views! Do not forget that if you have not managed to demonstrate your strong leadership abilities then your team will not be able to understand and accept the changes that you are trying to implement. You also have to bear in mind that the board of directors will most likely want to know what are the long-term advantages of this change and you have to succeed in persuading them that this will be useful for the company’s future!

5. Analyze the efficiency of the implemented change! In the beginning you should actively communicate with any team member who is directly affected by the changes. Explain him very carefully what led to this and how this will improve his personal efficiency. This helps you to avoid the risk of discontent, low productivity and low morale.

Remember that you will probably meet some resistance to the implemented change. The reason for this is that different people adapt differently. For some this happens in a flash, while others need a vast amount of time. In order to avoid any unpleasant and frustrating situations you have to fully understand the six phases people undergo when change occurs. They are*:

Anticipation – In this phase, people do not know what will happen and expect to see what would require from them.

Confrontation – At this stage, people begin to realize that change is inevitable and in some cases is already underway.

Realization – People enter this phase only when the change has already been imposed. Here they realize that things will never be as they were before.

Depression (or a strong nostalgia for the already established pattern of work) – the realization of change causes different emotions in people and they start (in most cases) to get nostalgic for the “good old times.”

Acceptance – In this phase the change has been accepted by most people. It is normal that some team members might still have doubts, but at this stage they are not willing to indicate a serious resistance.

Enlightenment – The last phase means that your team has fully accepted the imposed change and they even wonder how they managed to work under the old methods.

You should be aware that you will never know how long it will take to implement the change completely. The reason for this is again in these six phases. Simply said – people pass through them at different speeds. But if you are able to prove yourself as a leader, your vision will be adopted very quickly and soon you and your team will achieve your goals!